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Wednesday, March 12, 2008

John Kass' rant against Spitzer's "dragging Silda like some prop to be shamed" is a little on the misguided side. Of course I feel awful for her. Of course she's following in the footsteps of other political wives standing by their men. Of course she didn't have to do it . Kass has Spitzer "drag," "parade," and "trot out" his wife -- completely forgetting that Silda has two feet of her own. I have no idea why she went along with it, why she was up there. I can't pretend to understand; I can only have the deepest sympathy and utmost respect for whatever decision has made or will make. But the fact is, there's nothing political for her to gain - he's toast, she was never interested in campaigning, as far as I know. No one in the world would blame her if she weren't next to him for the cameras. The combination of those two may make her appearance hard to understand, but it was her own choice. To imply otherwise (indeed, to use all sorts of demeaning, passive verbs) is to assume that she is not a reasonable, thinking entity. Of course, no one knows what goes on behind closed doors - and if he asked her, that was a huge request and a huge compliance. If he didn't ask her, that was arguably an even huger move on her part and we have no place to comment.

We also have no place to read philosophical drama into the minutest of details: "At one point in the news conference, Mrs. Spitzer looked toward the ceiling to the back of the room -- and it seemed she saw infinity, perhaps remembering in a flash, all the little betrayals of a life together, some of them quite loud and fantastic, some silent and unspoken." Leave the lady alone. If you don't have anything supportive to say, don't say anything at all.

So a friend of mine the other day said online that since it was so nice out she was going to talk to campus for "fresh air and gd." Turns out she meant DG, but I really like "fresh air and God" as a reason to be outside. For anything.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Seeing the children out of context is one of the best things ever. They're going to be playing in the quads today! It's so exciting to see them. Except they tend not to believe that I go to school there. I'm not sure how to convince them ("Uh.. yes I do! See that building over there? That's Pick! It's for international studies! And there's Cobb, over there, I've had Spanish classes inside! What don't you believe?!").

So I was all excited to write about Garfield Minus Garfield, the greatest thing this side of awesome. It takes Garfield out of all the strips so all you see are bizarre, depressingly hilarious frames of Jon Arbuckle and sometimes lasagna. They are objectively wonderful. But someone else who decided to show this off noted that one of them "reminds me of an inside joke, and is probably only funny to me and a handful of my co-workers." Really, Steve? Really? In addition to being outlandishly immature, referencing inside jokes to other people is downright mean. (PS, The strip is independently funny. I understand you didn't think I would appreciate it outside of your group of friends who find it funny because of some other backstory, but believe it or not, I thought it was funny of its own accord.) I know I'm overly sensitive to things that involve exclusion, but bringing up inside jokes to people who wouldn't know them is one of the rudest, most condescending things you can do in a friendly conversation. Slash blog post.

Anyway, GMG is life-changingly phenomenal, and the New Pornographers' "Challengers" video is the greatest thing this side of the Sony bouncy balls commercial.

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Despite whatever deep and profound reasoning my first post may claim as my reasoning for restarting this blog, I admit that it is only still around because of a desire to write something other than my thesis.

But here's something interesting - when given a choice to play with (or be, or take home, etc) a Black versus a White doll, both Black and White preschool children chose the Black doll. Then there was a huge intervention with the researchers reading stories that were really positive towards Blacks, they rewarded children who chose Black dolls, they had them recite favorable things about Blacks, and then the majority chose Black dolls (Powell-Hopson and Hopson, 1988)! Hope for the race relations of the world, at our fingertips! Now to figure out how to either adapt that for the adult population among us or to just raise everyone like that, and we'll be set.

I realized something the other day - I've been playing with children for eight. Years. Holy schlamola.

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Anyone else so over winter? Sigh, anyway. More snow, which is crazy. But yesterday, it did a magical thing - snow just materialized. I don't know how it happened. I was waiting for a bus and out of nowhere snow just happened - it wasn't so much falling as it was blowing and swirling - some of the hugest, prettiest flakes ever. And, of course, it stopped as suddenly as it started.

Okay guys. Time to start working on this here B.A. I mean, I have been - as far as starting the lit review, subjects, methods, and problems with the study - but it needs fleshing out. I can't wait to not be researching anymore. I can't wait for that so much, I split an infinitive. That's right. As much as I love my boss and coworkers, I hate hate hate hate hate research. The only redeeming part about my lab is that it has direct potential implications for, say, police officer training. But other than that, it's like the way sports announcers say things like, "This left-handed catcher has the most right-handed throws to second base of anyone in the last five and a half years..." Either that, or something like, DID YOU KNOW THAT WHEN YOU'RE PRIMED WITH "OLD" YOU WILL BE MORE LIKELY TO THINK OF OLD PEOPLE! WHOA. Memory research is supposedly reasonable because of its meaning for eyewitness testimony. But what's going to come of the research? Juries instructed to disregard certain testimony? What are you going to do to help the witnesses? Juries don't listen to instructions anyway. They can't. You can't unring a bell, and you can't unhear something emotionally powerful. And research on economic trust, and cycles of interaction (just because Starkey Duncan was a great old man, wrote the book on interaction, and died the quarter after I took his class doesn't mean I have a different appreciation for the work), and ohhh language development. They don't mean much at all. At least, I can't see any practicality for them.

In discussion on Wednesday I got into a bizarre debate with a classmate about the necessity for motherese. I said that since motherese is inherently defined as the different way that adults address children, it will differ among cultures, but the simple fact that there's a difference is significant. And since it's universal according to this definition, it is necessary. He said it wasn't because he learned French without being motheresed. I think that was his argument. The discussion then descended into why we speak motherese to dogs, especially cute dogs, and interestingly, why we speak motherese to plants. See?! Vaguely, abstractly interesting, but it makes no fact in this life more or less probable. The jury's still out on whether I made a new friend or not. Sigh. Okay. Thesis time. Six more weeks-ish of working on it. I hope.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

So I still feel like I haven't been doing anything all quarter. It was my first time with three classes, there wasn't a play, two of these classes were directly for my thesis (one met once a week for half the allotted time, and for the other, my adviser and I kind of never felt like meeting), and the third I'm taking pass/fail. Laziest student ever award? And now that MT is over, I'm doing almost nothing with my life except playing with my cat and thinking about how much I'm going to miss this place. Woohoo, preemptive mourning! I should really learn how to fix that one of these years. It is no fun. Especially when you miss people and things before they're gone, or before you're gone as the case may be, months or years before it's time to go. Losing touch, or I guess just the idea of losing touch, is so overwhelmingly sad. I know college friends are nothing like high school friends, but I only actively keep in touch with one high school friend. I might see some others here and there, but that group is long broken up. And that just kills me. And it's not even just friends, it's the campus. Someone who graduated told me the other day that he was walking through campus and just missed it so much. He told me not to graduate. Sigh. And my several workplaces, I've been at one for a year, the other for two! Those kids and I are tight! Man, you guys. Leaving is the worst. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it -- every, every minute? (Wilder).

Today the children colored another slew of pictures for me. And we chatted about Dora and the fire alarm and red hair. Oh and yesterday, as I was coming from workplace #2, I saw them running around the quad! They had come to my school! I sprinted over and pretty much barreled through them. There was much screaming. It was mudlicious and puddle-wonderful. You guys, the sun makes everything better.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

I'm listening to the best conversation ever right now. I'm sitting in the C-Shop next to a table of four fairly large senior guys, and they've been talking about free bagel and coffee day, then they moved on to which core classes they took and liked and didn't like. Now they're talking about how great Wiis are, and how you can actually work up a sweat doing the tennis one for a while. They're not awkward or nerdy in any way. They're delightful. They're funny. I've wanted to jump into their conversation a hundred times by now. It makes me want to write this response paper even less than I already do.

Man, you guys. Killing a puppy for fun < awesome. I know it's tearing up the blogosphere and Gawker is horrified at how horrified other people are (and then very apologetic for being so horrified), but honestly. Even though it would have died on impact. Even though animals are tortured all the time. Even though lots of people are being killed right now. It has cleft my heart in twain. You know what else cleaves my heart in twain? Zoos. I'm so conflicted. Adorable. Confined. Cared for. Unnatural. These are the kinds of things that consume me. "If I ran the zoo, I'd let all the animals go." That's Suess. That's taken wildly out of context, but that's Suess. I read both If I Ran the Zoo and Horton Hatches the Egg this morning, and I'm more in love than ever. An elephant is faithful, one hundred percent! People say that the greatest gift of being a native English speaker is having the key to Shakespeare. I'm convinced that having the key to Suess is at least as great of a gift.

ps, Sorry this is the most non-sequitur post ever. Sometimes I can write decently, you guys. Sometimes I even use transitions and logical arguments!

Monday, March 3, 2008

So it occurred to me last year while crying and shuddering at the horror that is Pierrot Lunaire that Schoenberg is not unlike cummings. After formally studying it (by "formally studying" I mean "taking Music Civ which featured"), I have a vague appreciation for atonal in the context of the broad overall history of Western music. And that is a huge step for me. The first time I saw/heard it, I curled up in my seat in the closest to a fetal position as I could manage and tried to repress it right there on the spot. But then sometime later, I realized that this must be how Austin, the most classic of classic-loving men, feels about 'avant-garde' or free-verse poetry such as cummings. Whom I love. A lot. And when Austin told me of the pain of his soul upon reading cummings, I almost took personal offense. But now, although in completely different media, I see what he's saying. And I'm sorry, Austin. For not understanding, and then for titling this crazy thing the verbal equivalent of music which has no key or tonal center, and in which all notes are equally possible.

Atonal music is like socialism. It sounds like a cool idea, equality and all, but then when it actually happens, it's more awful than you could have imagined. Man, if I just inadvertently compared cummings to socialism, I'd be really really upset with myself. But in defense of anyone who likes cummings or Schoenberg, or classical for that matter, I learned last year that it's impossible to explain why you like something. You can only give objective facts about it as attempts at reasons, but there's no way to say why something (anything! or anyone!) is wonderful. Here's to you, Plato!

Sunday, March 2, 2008

So the Gospels get all upset at people who ask some questions or don’t really believe it when they’re first told, “Yeah, you see that guy over there? He’s the Son of Man!”But really, what’s the difference between those people and me? How are you supposed to automatically say, “I agree!” ?

How do you choose when to give? Given (ha) that you can’t give to everyone and every cause, all the time, how do you not feel guilty when you refuse beggars but somewhere you know that in your heart you give your time and money to other people and causes? You can’t give it all… right?Then how would you have the energy to…keep giving?

I hate when people you’re only friends with in classes friend you on Facebook, because probably, your classroom dynamic isn’t going to change, now you’ll just have that awkward feeling that you should now be acting closer to real friends but you’re just school friends.Should you say hi every day now?Bye?Ach.

By Memorial Day, I will have a job. I will have an apartment.I will have been a perfectly legal adult for four months. So why do I still feel an obligation to ask permission?

Sometimes, all I want to do with my life is buy dresses.And go to music festivals.And dance.

When, if ever, is it okay to leave a Facebook group about grieving? It’s okay (and in fact encouraged, and normal) to stop grieving after a while, but it seems less okay to leave a group about someone who died.Why is that?